Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday November 16, 2012 @01:17PM
from the or-perhaps-a-cybertsunami,-or-a-cyberarmageddon dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "For years lawmakers had heard warnings about holes in corporate and government systems that imperil U.S. economic and national security. Now Ward Carroll writes that in the face of what most experts label as a potential 'Cyber Pearl Harbor' threat, Republicans have stalled the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 with a Senate vote of 51–47 against the legislation. This drew a quick response from the staff of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: 'The U.S. defense strategy calls for greater investments in cybersecurity measures, and we will continue to explore ways to defend the nation against cyber threats,' says DoD spokesman George Little. 'If the Congress neglects to address this security problem urgently, the consequences could be devastating.' Many Senate Republicans took their cues from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and businesses that framed the debate not as a matter of national security, but rather as a battle between free enterprise and an overreaching government. They wanted to let companies determine whether it would be more cost effective — absent liability laws around cyber attacks — to invest in the hardware, software, and manpower required to effectively prevent cyber attacks, or to simply weather attacks and fix what breaks afterwards. 'Until someone can argue both the national security and the economic parts of it, you're going to have these dividing forces,' says Melissa Hathaway, a White House cyber official in the Bush and Obama administrations. 'Most likely, big industry is going to win because at the end of the day our economy is still in trouble.'"

They will blame Obama and come up with a way of combining 'Obama' and 'Science'. See, if only Obama had been a proper US-born Christian he would have believed in God and left well enough alone instead of allowing things like Science and Research to create the cyborgs.

The attack on Perl Harbor is now in phase 5.16.2, see our live coverage on CPAN.

I've never been able to grok this 'Pearl Harbor' metaphor thing, it is used to point out something no one could have possibly foreseen before it happens, which is a form of fore-seeing so whatever is being discussed could not ever later have been un-foreseen. Does that make any fore-sense?

Not to mention that unlike the ThisGATE ThatGATE AnythingGATE headline absurdity which is for fun and entertainment purposes only -- during th

A "cyber-Pearl Harbor" would break congressional deadlock in only one sense: You'd get the online equivalent of the Patriot Act. Politicians only seem to be able to agree on conceding civil liberties for the fake perception of security.

A "cyber-Pearl Harbor" would break congressional deadlock in only one sense: You'd get the online equivalent of the Patriot Act. Politicians only seem to be able to agree on conceding civil liberties for the fake perception of security.

+1, Depressing

I can only hope I'm killed in such an attack so I don't have to endure the new cyber police state that will be created as a result.

While the internet had its roots in DARPA, the reality is that the "public infrastructure" is privately owned. Critical government systems should not be on it. Critical privately owned and operated services (power, telecom, etc.) should be hardened to the extent that the provider desires or the contracts that they signed with various municipalities require.

I've worked contract gigs with the armed services and I have a lot of respect for the technical skills they have, but that's irrelevant. Companies and businesses should be able to make their own decisions and benefit from their good decision making or suffer from their poor decision making. Anywhere that government intersects with private industry, it's on the government to make sure their contracts properly spell out their requirements. End of story.

While the internet had its roots in DARPA, the reality is that the "public infrastructure" is privately owned. Critical government systems should not be on it. Critical privately owned and operated services (power, telecom, etc.) should be hardened to the extent that the provider desires or the contracts that they signed with various municipalities require.

I've worked contract gigs with the armed services and I have a lot of respect for the technical skills they have, but that's irrelevant. Companies and businesses should be able to make their own decisions and benefit from their good decision making or suffer from their poor decision making. Anywhere that government intersects with private industry, it's on the government to make sure their contracts properly spell out their requirements. End of story.

While your reasoning is seductive, it is fundamentally flawed. The reality is that "government" buys a lot of it's services from private companies. That includes utilities like electricity and water, as well as networking services. While there a few three-letter federal agencies who can justify the expense and complexity of laying their own fiber/copper from place to place. Most can do no such thing, not even close, so they buy what they need from the carriers. Yes, yes, we all all know about the ways that networking over leased media, even over the public Internet, can be made reasonably secure. We also know that "secure" is a not a state, but rather a process. Lastly, we know that many, many of the "moving parts" on the Internet are not kept as secure as they might be.

All that said, I don't expect the federal government, much less Congress, to "get it right" when it comes to regulations regarding "cyber security". And I am seriously loathe to let those bastards write a blank check to their favorite campaign donors from the "cyber security" industry, but at some point we are going to have to spend serious money to make sure that the lights stay on, the cell towers still work, and that emergency services communications still function. The expertise to "properly spell out their requirements" does not come cheaply. It will have to be bought. The Republicans are blocking this because the right barrels aren't going to get enough pork, not because they don't appreciate the problem. Nor do they give a shit about our privacy. I just hope like hell that the debate is vigorous and involves people who actually know what they're talking about. Yeah, I know. I'm a dreamer.

The Republicans are blocking this because the right barrels aren't going to get enough pork, not because they don't appreciate the problem. Nor do they give a shit about our privacy. I just hope like hell that the debate is vigorous and involves people who actually know what they're talking about. Yeah, I know. I'm a dreamer.

...Aaand you think the Democrats won't be doing the same thing, making sure that certain palms get crossed with silver? What if the RIAA and MPAA has something to say about it?

That reading isn't necessarily implied. The parent is merely pointing out that, in this instance, the republicans probably blocked because their supporters weren't on the handouts list. Presumably the dem supporters were. If that situation were reversed, then it would be the dems trying to block. The party is interchangeable in this setup. Parent merely highlighted republicans in this instance because that's how the cards fall in this instance... No need to get all partisan. It's politics after all.

Quite right. Thanks for clarifying what I should have. Big legislation is driven by those who buy it, and those buyers have their whores on both sides of the aisle. It has always worked that way, pretty much, so don't look for that to change until the electorate wakes up and insists on instant run-off elections, public campaign financing and a Constitutional amendment that reverses "Citizens United". Meanwhile, the best we can hope for is that such dangerous legislation is argued over long and hard, so th

...it's on the government to make sure their contracts properly spell out their requirements.

If an agency is going to use a service provider of any kind and they have special requirements, those requirements need to be put in the RFP and the government employees need to make sure that the contracts they are accepting actually meet those requirements. There's no constitutional basis for the government to say that because they are using "lots" of private providers, t

I think the point is not that these entities shouldn't have connectivity to the Internet, but the network they use to monitor and operate the critical infrastructure components should be segregated from any network accessible from the Internet. How they are segregated is up for discussion.

A quibble. Once it's wireless, these are the PUBLIC airwaves, in the US. These are leased, for the COMMON BENEFIT of the public. They are not the private, rent-domain of telco corporations, no matter how they behave.

That said, yes. Why the f*ck is a powerstation or auto assembly plant bridging their private control nets to their needed Internet infrastructure?

CLUE! Don't solve this by adding police controls to the Internet part of this arrangement!

Companies and businesses should be able to make their own decisions and benefit from their good decision making or suffer from their poor decision making.

Then we need a standing government red team to continuously and creatively attack these infrastructure providers with large penalties any time an infrastructure system is sufficiently penetrated to have permitted the red team attacker to disable it. The price of failure is too high to wait until a foreign entity attacks: the company must suffer for poor decision making much earlier.

Well if CEOs and PHBs at these beloved powerplants and other critical and potentially dangerous places didn't have PLC logic controllers and equipment to the live internet for their report generations and slick marketing videos by Allen Bradley we wouldn't need regulation!

They are not acting in the best interest of the public, but for their jobs getting reports to management. Not for the greater good. Yes, an attack is needed sadly to change this.

The problem with legislating "security" is that you end up with "compliance" instead. The companies get a checklist and fill it in with the cheapest "solutions" possible that will allow them to check off each item.

It's a start. Right now, most companies have no idea how to handle anything other than "run anti-virus software" on as many machines as can be conveniently handled.

I'm involved with teaching cybersecurity for DHS. Our network, that we use to develop cybersecurity classes, is about as secure as the "lock" on a bathroom stall. But we sure are in compliance with a lot of regulations!
A coworker and I were just discussing the fact that agency "security" regulations prevent us from making things secure. Example "anything hashed must be hashed with MD5". MD5 is broken, so we were going to use SHA-256, but regulations don't allow SHA-256. The other end refuses to use MD5 since it's broken, so we have to send the data in clear. With no"security" regulation it would be SHA-256 hashed. To comply with the "security" rules, we have to send it in the clear, out in the open. Such is government regulation.

So wait... let me get this straight... broken MD5 is not acceptable because it's... well... broken, but clear text is OK? I guess no one cracked clear text yet...

And lest I say something stupid, I went to Wikipedia to figure out who uses MD5 as a block cipher and came up empty. MD5 doesn't appear to be a block cipher in any usage, but something that you attach to data (either plain or encrypted) to verify integrity/identity. NIST seems to still like 3DES for block encryption just fine. NIST also like SHA

Clearly that is what Leon Panetta is hoping, since he keeps talking about getting a Cyber Pearl Harbor.

He'd be a lot more believable if he talked about what real measures he was planning on taking, so we could see them, and evaluate them. The reason he doesn't is because the measures he plans on taking won't really help the situation very much.....

It seems like the EFF is estatic about this latest bill getting [eff.org] voted [eff.org] down [eff.org].

The bill is well over a hundred pages long and includes many components other than sections about sharing data with the government....

Under the bill, the provisions for “monitoring” are very broad. Companies (“any private entity”) are granted “affirmative authority” to “monitor information systems” and “information that is stored on, processed by, or transiting the information systems” for cybersecurity threats. A company could also monitor someone else’s network if it has been granted authority to do so, for example an outside consulting firm hired to help with network security.

Data collected under the Cybersecurity Act can be shared with law enforcement for non-cybersecurity purposes if it “appears to relate to a crime” either past, present, or near future.

TFA is very misleading as far as discussing the actual issues at hand.

Not to mention that the submission fails to note that Republicans cannot block anything in the Senate when done by a vote shy of a filibuster. They are the minority party in the Senate--both before and after the election--and anything that goes by party lines will always fall in favor of the Democrats in that case. Therefore, a 51-47 vote means that one person didn't even vote, and that some Democrats agreed with the Republicans that it was a bad bill.

I guess we didn't learn anything from when 9-11 happened and we created the TSA, a group of intrusive busybodies at best and molestors at worst.

Or organized all federal law enforcement under the DHS without actually thinking about how it would coordinate things so we have another layer of government that is busy trying to justify their existence by going after random stuff. I hear they do copyright enforcement now?

I suppose we are set to see a Cybersecurity Agency with powers to monitor everything and permaban people from the internet based on anonymous accusations like the no-flight lists? What's the worst that could happen?

I suppose we are set to see a Cybersecurity Agency with powers to monitor everything and permaban people from the internet based on anonymous accusations like the no-flight lists? What's the worst that could happen?

Imagine how useful they would be with proper inter-agency information sharing rules!
Now, if FBI wants to bust that file sharer and can't get access to their information, they could just ask the CyberAgency to help them out.
After all, the majority of the PATRIOT act provisions are often applied to anti-drug busts since PATRIOT provisions are just easier to use than regular laws. Who cares if it was developed as a response to terrorists...

Yes, it will take a cyber Pearl Harbor. Congress is reactive, not proactive. Otherwise, they'd be called "Progress".

So just be happy that they're doing nothing now. Because after cyber Pearl Harbor, we're in for all kinds of pain. The internet kill switch will happen. They'll destroy that which they don't understand.

On the plus side, we'll finally be forced to implement the distributed p2p mesh network to get around it. Go set up your openmesh now... while it's still publicly available;-)

There's no "basic assumption", it's just the only real good way we know how to do these things. The industry, as a rule, is only interested in information security if they are forced to. In my experience, 99% of organisation won't lift a finger about security without a legal threat, ideally backed by a big fine in case of non-compliance. We are far, far away from any hope of seeing the industry self-regulate over something like this.

This entire conversation is nonsensical. Korporate Amerika has offshored too many jobs, too much investment, too much technology (including sensitive military tech during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and probably still?), etc. And since it's been chiefly the Chinese hackers (and Russky criminal types) who are doing the cracking, while the rest of us are continuously given the pinko slip by the criminal corporations who then offshore the jobs (while bringing in more foreign visa workers), the subj

'Most likely, big industry is going to win because at the end of the day our economy is still in trouble.'

Is "our economy is still in trouble" the new "we are at WAR with terror"? Mr Pickens is accurate and timely but this line just feels a little too canned. Are we going to have to spend the next 5 to 7 years hearing "butbutbut RECESSION!" any time something hard to swallow makes a headline?

Republicans have stalled the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 with a Senate vote of 51-47 against the legislation

So, I am not an expert on politics, but in the current congress, there 51 democratic senators, 47 republican senators, and 2 independents (both of whom caucus with the democrats). By my count, if every single senate republican voted against this, that still only comes to 47 votes. That means that the other 4 would have had to break ranks with the democratic party. So, just who is at fault here?

Republicans have stalled the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 with a Senate vote of 51-47 against the legislation

So, I am not an expert on politics, but in the current congress, there 51 democratic senators, 47 republican senators, and 2 independents (both of whom caucus with the democrats). By my count, if every single senate republican voted against this, that still only comes to 47 votes. That means that the other 4 would have had to break ranks with the democratic party. So, just who is at fault here?

Just saying.

This. It's not just "one party". It's The Hill in general.

Not that I've read the legislation that they're voting on to ensure it's at least moderately sane. Most of it isn't.

In case you truly don't know and are not trolling, the U.S. Senate has filibuster procedure [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster]. It allows a minority to hold any legislation hostage. It requires super-majority of 60 votes to break filibuster [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajority#Three-fifths_majority]. Filibuster used to be an exception, but republicans made it mainstream in the last two decades blocking many Democratic legislations.

The threat of a filibuster is only necessary when your side doesn't have more votes. People can blame Republicans for it all they want, but it was Democrats that didn't vote for the Bill.

Not to mention the obvious by adding that it's a good thing that a Lame Duck session did not grant more power to one of the most incompetent bureaucracies in the US: the DHS. The last thing that anyone needs is the DHS knocking on every business' door while making inane requirements that protect no

You should look up how the Senate works. Those 47 Republicans can block each and every single piece of legislation. The Senate Requires a Two Thirds Majority is the Minority group wants to throw a fit.

So, I am not an expert on politics, but in the current congress, there 51 democratic senators, 47 republican senators, and 2 independents (both of whom caucus with the democrats). By my count, if every single senate republican voted against this, that still only comes to 47 votes. That means that the other 4 would have had to break ranks with the democratic party. So, just who is at fault here?

Uhm... the party that supplied MOST OF 51 against vote is largely responsible. Certainly if it is 47 Republicans + 4 Democrats are voting against, then it is Republicans who are actually blocking the bill? How else can you interpret it?

"Critical infustructure" has always been vulnerable to attack... countless thousands of miles of unguarded rail, transmission lines, hundreds of thousands of square miles of unguarded lands with easy access to aquifers, Ignition hazards around all manner of unguarded hydrocarbon storage facilities. Little furry creatures enjoying unfettered access to carry out suicide missions inside of transmission facilities. Construction operators and sailors accidently knocking out communications to entire cities and

As has been pointed out many times on Slashdot, computers that control critical infrastructure are connected to the Internet more often than not, due to factors ranging from operator's creating unauthorized connections for personal convenience, to management wanting flashy real time reports to government regulations requiring offsite backup of process parameter data history.

Those PLCs on unpatched XP boxes are not secured on purpose due to retarded management. Sadly we need laws and an attack on the US wont be on websites but by these PLCs from the likes of Iran or someone else.

Is jut easier to do it the attack and blame whoever in the world, as it all digital and at the reach of any owned computer anywhere. Even to build up the vulnerability to get attacked and be sure that it affects something in a visible way, if wasn't available before.

Its time for the TSA to extend its reach to go from just the people that board planes in US, to the entire world. They already proved how trustable are.

The US has not passed a proper federal budget since NINETEEN-FUCKING-NINETY-SEVEN. We sit on the edge of a "fiscal cliff" not because the government can't work together today to undo the one functionally useful compromise they made last year, but rather, because they haven't managet to work together in decades.

Yes, eventually a foreign enemy will take advantage of our weak stance on cybersecurity. Yes, it will take a "Pearl Harbor" moment to make anyone recognize the problem (to which they'll respond by enacting tougher copyright laws, of course). But cybersecurity falls so far down the list of real problems we face as a country that, even as an IT professional, I honestly can't get all that worked up about it.

When we have our house in order; when we have a balanced budget; when we stop fighting our grandfathers' wars; when we stop worrying about legislating in time with the "news cycle"; when we have a stable economy and don't wonder what our tax rates next year will look like; when the losers in Washington start acting in the public interest instead of demanding we buy chastity belts for all our generals - Then perhaps we can worry about beefing up our national network security.

Define "proper federal budget", because they have passed federal budgets since then - mind you the last time a budget was passed by both houses of congress was 2009 (the democrat controlled senate has refused to pass a budget since then)

I mean passing an actual, complete federal budget. The 2009 "budget" only contained an omnibus spending bill, not an actual budget.

You may call that picking nits, but it has both a constitutional and a practical basis. Constitutional, because Article I requires congre

The US has not passed a proper federal budget since NINETEEN-FUCKING-NINETY-SEVEN.

Ooh, yeah, I like the fact that wars have managed to stay off the budget completely. What's up with emergency supplemental appropriations bills that funded Iraq/Afganistan? Where were the budget-conservative Republicans when those passed?
(I know that both parties are the same, blah blah... but Republicans _are_ running on "no more taxes/no more debt" platform)

Republicans have stalled the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 with a Senate vote of 51–47 against the legislation.

Last I heard, the democrats had a majority (and the tie-break vote) in the senate. Why blame this on the republicans?

Many Senate Republicans took their cues from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and businesses that framed the debate not as a matter of national security, but rather as a battle between free enterprise and an overreaching government. They wanted to let companies determine whether it would be more cost effective — absent liability laws around cyber attacks — to invest in the hardware, software, and manpower required to effectively prevent cyber attacks, or to simply weather attacks and fix what breaks afterwards.

Not that I advocate waiting can cleaning up the mess later, I fear that all we would be doing is creating a safe harbor for companies by the proposed approach (basically I did the government recommendations, still got hacked, no problem). It would be much better to clarify what companies would be liable for and how much. I think better tradeoffs could be made rather than with a proscriptive government approach. See Section 706 of the bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s2105/text [govtrack.us] .

Even if this doesn't pass, for federal infrastructure and infrastructure deemed important to national security, Obama can unilateral impose most of these things as an Executive order for government entities and contractors.

As written the bill attempts to force IT that causes the interruption of life-sustaining services, catastrophic economic damage (vs just severe degradation of national security or national security capabilities) which is a much wider scope. You might argue as written, this bill is so vague that could be construed to apply to Amazon, or Google, or even a small airline or bus or telephone company that has the only service for an isolated area. Also as with many bills, it comes with its share of government overhead (appropriations for national education and awareness programs, recruiting for various government agencies, etc)...

I guess it's still divided government, and very few people want to write a good bill, but just try to force their bill and blame the other side for not being able to pass them... Sigh...

I disagree. Intelligence reports to Iran utilizing PLCs with nuclear powerplants and energy on the the internet. If the reports are true they are insecure for PHBs and run non patched XP SP 2 then with horrible to no encryption then yes it is an easy target

What is sad is an attack by Iran or anonymous will be needed and government intervention because the PHBs are stupid and retarded with their internet enabled report generations from the marketing videos.

PLCs and not website hacking is the biggest threat in which Iran wants to do out or revenge for Stuxnet.

When government itself can't even harden its own systems and air-gap critical systems from the wild and woolly web, putting them in charge of controlling the internet in general is simply the TSA all over again.

The Cyber Security act was and is simultaneously too broad and to toothless. It would be necessary to prop it up with all sorts of invasive regulations. It would inevitably lead to internet police, and digital pat-downs of every aspect of internet usage.